YOU ARE GOING TO CONCERTS WRONG...LET'S FIX IT
I’m trying out an out-of-character inflammatory headline in the hopes that you will click or tap on this story. Even though I try to approach life with equanimity, there are times when the equanimity, like a naughty dog, does not come when called...and as Kendrick Lamar once said, I GOT A BONE TO PICK.
I went to the first night of Chappell Roan's pop-up show in Pasadena. I wrote about the experience for GQ.com; I had an unbelievable time. It was essentially a festival in a large field (golf course), and no assigned seats; there was a VIP area near the front but the majority of people there had GA tickets. This was the most democratic format of concert: a piece of land with boundaries, everyone equal within them, more or less.
Molly Mary O’Brien
When I went on Reddit to confirm the name of the rubber dragon baby Roan brought out before singing “Coffee” (Shigella, naturally) I saw dozens of posts expressing negative feelings about the show. People were pushing and shoving. People were trying to overtake spots on the barricade. People were rude and mean. People were drunk and passing out. Wow, what concert did these people go to? The one I attended was full of happy, costumed friends and lovers having the time of their lives. What the hell happened?*
Here is what happened: these people went to the concert WRONG. They attended the concert hoping To Get As Close To The Artist As Possible. They arrived very early and sat in the hot sun all day. By the time Chappell went on after 9pm, they were tired and sweaty, they were hungry and they had to pee, and most importantly, they were confronting a complete lack of solidarity from other concert attendees who also were there To Get As Close To The Artist As Possible. Meanwhile at last weekend's Austin City Limits, Sabrina Carpenter rail-riders were doing bodies and spaces (derogatory) to the point of fisticuffs; security guards were picking up girlies and kicking them out like they were plucking carrots from a garden. No wonder they call it the barricades, because these fans are truly Les Misérables.
This is no way to experience live music. No way at all! I understand many of these people are young. They adore the artist, they want to see her in the flesh, not via Jumbotron. They are true believers—if Chappell or Sabrina were religious prophets, would their followers be content to hover shyly at the back of the crowd, or worse, to read a pamphlet passed out after the fact? No, they'd be up front, close enough to touch the holy lady and then be healed. Depeche Mode understood the importance of proximity to extreme devotion: Reach out and touch faith.
I understand this desire, to be close, to have eyeballs on the physical being who brings you so much joy. (I also understand that Reddit is the complaint department of these kind of things, and plenty of the 40,000+ people at the shows probably had just as good of a time as me.) But all it seems to bring is heartache. If you love a singer, and you put everything you have into seeing them up close, and you walk away from the show with a sour taste in your mouth because you got stepped on or yelled at...was it worth it? If the desire you followed brought you to this, of what use was the desire?
This is not a new phenomenon—when my friends got caught in a cross-draft of Lana Del Rey stans sprinting like 28 Days Later zombies toward the Outdoor Theater stage for her 2014 Coachella set, at least one of them had his shirt ripped off his body—but it has been intensified by post-2020 concert conditions, where prices are high, the desire to get good angles for video recordings is strong, and Being In Public manners have fallen off. And call me crazy but unless you're attending a punk show or similar, you shouldn't be getting brutalized at concerts the way these poor people are.
I enjoyed the Chappell show from the back. I could still clearly see the large LCD screens, which displayed crystal-clear video (Goldenvoice production value is always so choice), and the sound was loud and bright and allowed me to enjoy Chappell's microphone being super, super ON. Shit, she sounds even better this year than last year, 'the vocals were vocaling' or whatever. I had sooo much room to dance, and I got to jump up and down like a maniac to "Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl" and "Femininomenon." I felt happy and free and I didn't bump into anyone and no one bumped into me.
In the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, I remember someone on Twitter saying how people keep making the mistake of thinking concerts are an individual experience shared between the artist and the fan, when they should be thinking about them as communal experiences shared with everyone. I keep rotating that concept in my mind, because so many factors—egregious ticket prices, social media mind-melt, policies from venues that tacitly encourage camping, crowding and sprinting—join forces to create this kind of individualistic environment, and then you have people with underdeveloped social skills from spending several important years of mental growth inside on their phones (not their fault!!) who have trouble de-escalating these heightened situations, and then it ends up a total mess. At the Chappell show, opener Hemlocke Springs had to start a song over because people were fighting...how are you fighting during a damn Hemlocke Springs set??
I'm 35 years old and I know this message might just be old woman yells at cloud/crowd, but it really does break my heart when I hear about people having a preventable bad time at a show. Concerts are supposed to lift up our spirits, re-align our vibrations, help us figure shit out, keep our knees from seizing up, put our brains in the washing machine. Live music is supposed to be cathartic and life-affirming. Live music is a literal miracle. Spending $100+ (or realistically these days, $300+) on a concert ticket and then having a bad time is such a scam. Stop scamming yourselves. Meet me at the back of the crowd...I will be TWIRLING and you can twirl with me if you want.
*I've been misunderstood about this on social media before so figure I'd put it in here, none of these crowd kvetches apply to disabled people seeking ADA-compliant experiences—disabled people deserve to have the same kind of concert experiences as anyone else, and to be honest it sounds like ADA was rough at the Chappell show, which sucks.
Anyway thanks for reading I Enjoy Music! If you like it, tell a friend.
